Now, when using this chat here, no matter if it's the chat in the sidebar or the inline
chat, you also have some other useful shortcuts available.
For one, in the inline chat, you can also refer to specific files or code bases.
This could be useful if you want to generate some code here in this file based on some
code in some other file.
You could then refer to that other file here.
But besides these hashtag shortcuts here, you can also use the at symbol to get access
to some other shortcuts.
Most importantly here in the main chat sidebar.
Maybe at the point of time you're watching this also here in the inline chat.
Right now it's a bit more limited here for me.
But in that main chat sidebar, you see, if I type an at symbol, I get some other participants
as GitHub calls them, I can bring into the chat to add even more or very specific context
to the chat.
For example, I can add at VS Code to ask a question about VS Code.
So maybe a question that's not related to my project at all, but maybe a question regarding
some VS Code settings, like where can I tweak the styling of the code in my editor?
I can ask this question and hopefully I'll get back some helpful information regarding
where in VS Code I can tweak that thing.
And indeed, here it gives me some information regarding which settings I could change and
it even gives me a button, you will sometimes get that here in that sidebar chat, which
you can click to be taken to that place in the settings.
So that's also very useful.
And it's not just VS Code, you can also ask questions about the terminal, we'll get back
to that soon.
About the entire workspace, so again, your entire project here with all its code, all
its configuration files and so on.
About GitHub, if you're pushing your code to GitHub or if you're working with GitHub
here.
So that's also very useful.
By the way, it's also at GitHub, at least at the point of time where I'm recording this,
which you would have to select if you would want to incorporate web search into the response
that's generated.
So it's not obvious, but if you use GitHub, you will actually also get the AI behind this
chat to search the web and incorporate the web search results into its response.
So we can try this here, for example, with at GitHub to ask regarding does this code
in this file follow all the common Python coding best practices, especially regarding
code style.
And it does not, by the way.
And I can also bring in that file again to be really clear about which file I'm referring.
So now here I got two pieces of context.
I got GitHub to also take into account web search if needed.
And I got this file.
And now these references are being used.
So here, actually, I, at least at the point of time where I'm recording this, would have
to push this code to GitHub before being able to use at GitHub.
So therefore, I'll actually try again in a new chat, but this time without at GitHub.
So without the web search, but maybe it can still help me.
Because the main point really is that you can bring different pieces of context into
the chat to get the best possible reply.
And now here I'm getting some suggestions regarding how I could tweak the code to make
it a bit better and to be more in line with common best practices if I wanted to apply
them.
But the main takeaway is that with the hash symbol and the at symbol, you can bring different
pieces of context and participants into the chat to get better results.